"Fish Tail" carving tools I made.

Explanation of the fish tail carving tools:

The image thingy has gone NUTZ!!!! I am tired of trying to deal with the extra pictures,and NOWHERE to write!

Anyone who would like to add to his set of carving tools can custom make these to whatever shapes he wants,but don't want to pay $40 dollars PER TOOL!

They are made of W1 tool steel. PLAIN CARBON STEEL like W1 will take the sharpest razor edge of ANY tool steel.It's cheap to buy,too.

The steel comes in 1/8" ,1/4" and up to 1/2" squares. It is easy to heat up the end with a Mapp gas torch till it's good and red hot. Then,flatten the end on an anvil,or sturdy hunk of steel! Then,take a hard wood block and a piece of round bar steel that has the amount of curve you want. Heat up the fishtail again,and quickly hammer the round bar against the fishtail,squashing it into the hardwood block. Then,heat to red hot again,and quench in room temperature water. Too cold,and the W1 can split.

notice that these carving tools have no bolsters against the handles. These were not made to be hammered,just pushed.

You could make blsters. The tangs are TAPERED. Just make your bolster.and drill a central hole. File the hole square,and tapered inside to fit the tapered tang. Precision is not really needed. But do a reasonable job. Harden the bolsters and temper them dark brown, Once you slip the bolsters over the tangs,and first drill a smaller than tang hole in the handles,your bolsters will never allow the blade's tangs to be driven farther up into the handle. I have made them so you can't tell that the bolsters were not forged on from the solid,as they usually are,of course,done.

If you want the surfaces to stay clean,with no scale,buy a can of BROWNELL"S NO SCALE. compound. Comes from Brownell's Gunsmith Supply. Flies off when you quench in water,leaving a CLEAN,grey surface like a new file,or better.

Once you learn to make your own tools,you are no longer limited to store bought shapes,and can let your imagination run more freely. Some great carvers in the past,like Grinling Gibbons, Perhaps the greatest carver f the 17th. C. and beyond,forged their own tools as needed.
 
Thank you, George, You've answered a question I didn't realize I had. I've been picking up (for at least 50 years) old (dirt cheap) wood carving tools, never can find just what I want. Now I know how to make them.
 
Fish tail tools are available commercially. They are really intended to reach into corners of less than 90º. But,they can also serve as regular carving tools. True,they cannot be sharpened as many times as regular carving tools,but these I made have lasted many,many years. If you only use sharpening stones on them,they will last a very long time. Only grind them to get the bevel started. And,if you are not an accurate grinder,file the bevel on them while they are still soft. Then,coat them with "No Scale",from Brownells Gunsmithing,and the sharp edge will not de carb much while they are red hot. Then,stone away the filed bevel,and use fine stones to keep them sharp. I use those ceramic stones from Spyderco. You may have to make their surface smoother with a diamond stone,scrubbing and keep letting water rinse off the steel particles. Once you get the Spydercos ground smoother and any "ceramic fuzz" from molding them ground away,you may never ever be able to wear them into a dip in the middle. They are the only stones that will hone hard D2 steel. Arkansas stones are quit soft in comparison.

You can make an effective decarb yourself: Take a tablespoon of flour,a little yeast,and a bit of salt. Carefully add water,and mix until like a THICK pancake batter. Dip your tools in that. The batter will burn,and smell like burnt bread,which it really is. It will leave a thick coating of carbon on the tool,which protects it from decarbing,and easily washes off after the quench. You can't save it,as it will rot after a few days,but it is cheap and easy to make.

The famous 19th. English tool and file maker,Peter Stubbs,used "Beer Leavings" (spent mash of some kind. Some will say that beer doesn't make mash. I don't know,but that is what Stubbs called it),to coat his files to protect their delicate teeth for heat treating. They knew how to get by with little back in the old days.

I will caution you that it is hard to see the color of the steel when it is being heated with your Mapp gas torch. But,with practice you will get to "see" what is happening beneath the glowing layer of No Scale,or batter.
 
Last edited:
Nice tools, George!

The carbonized coating most likely adds a small amount of additional case hardening to the surface as well . There are myriad ancient formulas for case hardening which contain some sort of organic material.
 
Yes,they didn't really know what caused the metal to become hardened until in the 19th. C.,they began to have some understanding of chemistry. I have 3 chemistry books by the same company. The first one is Civil War age. A little over an inch thick. Full of the phrase "This process is not well understood". My 1903 one is THREE inches thick,and obviously full of real info. Shows how far they have come in not that many years apart.

The old people just knew empirically that if you did this and this, this will happen. They packed wood,urine from a red headed boy,or from a wine drinking friar,and a bunch of other worthless stuff(HIGHLY SECRET,no doubt!!) into a crucible,or a large chest of sandstone if a large steel making furnace was being used. They looked like huge funnels sat dide end down on the ground. Men,whose life could not have been too long,would crawl into these furnaces,when cold! They would pack soft wrought iron bars in many layers,adding the secret compound between layers. It was the carbon bearing stuff that case hardened the rods. The rest burned off. Then the poor devils had to load the furnace with a huge quantity if fuel. Coal or better,wood. Coal had sulfur in it,which made the steel "hot short",or inferior in other ways. The English did not understand this process,and bought their best iron bars from Sweden. They only used wood in Sweden. Countless rumors abounded as to WHY Spanish gun barrels were the best(they thought it was the AIR in Spain!)

After the furnace had been kept hot for several days,they'd let it burn till cool. The men would crawl back inside,amidst the powdered ashes that were very deep,and would get breathed. They'd open the chest and take the deeply case hardened steel bars out. BUT,the middles of these bars were always soft wrought iron as they were not fully penetrated by the carbon. Bundles of these bars would be wired together,and welded into a solid bar. This was called SHEAR STEEL. If they folded the big bar over and welded it into one bar again,that was the more expensive "Double Shear Steel. The soft spots in double shear steel had been made smaller,but they were still there.

In the 18th. C.,Benjamin Huntsman,a WATCH MAKER,of all things! Was frustrated with his watch springs breaking because they had those soft spots in them. He tried putting chunks of wrought iron and carbon compound into a crucible,luting it shut,and actually heatinf it so hot that the iron melted,and absorbed carbon evenly all the way through. THIS WAS TRUE TOOL STEEL,about like our W1 water hardening steel. His steel became in high demand,and he ended up making steel.
This was called "crucible steel",or CAST STEEL,and that term can be found,boasted upon chisels and other tools made in the 19th. C.. Butcher was a well known brand. You can still find them in Pennsylvania flea markets.
 
Back
Top